K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences

Part of the allure

Yesterday I managed to astound a software engineer for a semiconductor company just by turning on a computer.

I had dragged the Thinkpad to the office to show a few pictures, and right now it has a very slim Crux installation in place. It starts in 16 seconds with all the goodies, straight to Openbox, network, file manager — you know the routine. It’s very responsive and very quick.

And of course, to an engineer who uses quad-core machines running Vista, a 550Mhz laptop (and a Celeron, at that) with 192Mb that’s ready to go in 16 seconds is bewildering. She said her staff regularly turns on their computers, gets coffee, then stands around waiting for the desktop to finish loading.

I admit part of the allure of working with Linux on older machines is reminding the owners of newer computers (Windows and Linux systems) that all that power and speed is going to waste if it’s burdened by an overweight operating system or a heavyweight desktop. Sure, if it’s what you want or need, then for goodness sake, use it.

Just don’t look so astonished when I’m online and surfing and you’re watching the “Loading …” progress bar creep across the screen. :twisted:

As for my software engineer, she said she’s going to tell her staff about the laptop and I offered to let her borrow it, if she wants to show it in person. Something like that is best seen, and not just heard word-of-mouth. :D

No, I didn’t, not yet anyway. I would like to start over with this system before offering any suggestions either, because I stumbled through this one without really doing a very good job of making sure things were cleanly and efficiently built.

After the next round, I promise a better explanation. Please watch this space. :D